With the increasing number of hospitalizations of patients with coronavirus disease (Covid-19), Delhi hospitals have started to run out of intensive care unit beds. Only 35% of the total 2,201 ICU beds allocated for the treatment of Covid-19 patients in hospitals remain vacant on Monday morning, according to the Delhi Corona app. With this in mind, the Delhi government yesterday ordered 28 large private hospitals to reserve 80% of their total ICU beds for Covid-19 patients.
The total number of hospitalizations was 6,503, according to the daily health bulletin published by the Delhi government on Sunday. This has surpassed the highest number of hospitalizations, just over 6,200, that Delhi had seen during the surge in cases in June.
Those in hospitals account for only about 22% of the total number of active cases or those still living with the infection in Delhi.
The government had created a committee in early June to assess the need for hospital beds. Based on trends at the time, the committee had predicted that Delhi would need 15,000 beds by the end of June and 42,000 by mid-July. However, the numbers began to decline in late June.
Meanwhile, the government had increased its bed capacity to more than 15,000 and gradually began to reduce it in August, when the number of new cases and hospitalizations fell. Currently, Delhi has 14,397 beds for the treatment of Covid-19 patients in all hospitals, both government and private. Of these, only 15% of the beds are in intensive care units and have or without a fan.
To increase the number of ICU beds, the government had first run its own hospitals, Lok Nayak, Guru Teg Bahadur and the Rajiv Gandhi Superspecialty Hospital, to increase the number of ICU beds. The three hospitals currently have 600 ICU beds, of which almost 48% remain vacant.
It is the large multispecialty private hospitals that are running out of ICU beds, approximately 85% of ICU beds in these hospitals are currently occupied.
“You see, patients who had delayed their surgeries and other planned procedures have started visiting hospitals in the last month, and most of the large private hospitals are operating at 90% of the total ICU capacity. If you look at the statistics for these larger hospitals over the past three months, they received roughly 2.5 times more non-Covid patients than Covid patients. This means that the government would be putting the lives of these non-Covid patients in danger, ”said Girdhar Gyani, Director General of the Association of Healthcare Providers (India).
“Apart from that, this measure is also financially penalizing private hospitals. When they say that 80% of ICU beds must be reserved, it means that beds must be reserved even if there are no Covid-19 patients. But the government would not pay the hospitals. It’s one thing to say, reserve 500 beds and we’ll pay for it. Also, why should ICU beds be left empty when someone else might need them? ”Gyani said.
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